We currently undertake a variety of consulting projects, either individually or jointly, within a number of areas in the coffee shop industry.
These include everything from full turn-key coffee bar creation to assistance with training (coffee, customer service and management), marketing and operational systems development. Hugh also provides advice on the specification of your coffee offer.
Our clients range from single site operators to chains with hundreds of outlets. For client confidentiality we tend not to publish lists of who these people are. Testimonials are available if you absolutely require these but they must be treated on a highly confidential basis. They will only be supplied if we feel you have a project or business that we might be interested in working with.
If we decide to work together you can expect us to be 100% committed to your project and business. We only take limited clients on so that we can totally immerse ourselves in your business. That’s the only way it can work for us but you can rest assured that we will live, sleep and breath your concept until we are finished working together.
Rates:
We charge in two different ways.
Projects – We can charge per project. The minimum cost for a project will be £5000 plus expenses. It is simply not possible to fully understand your business and the solutions that you need without intensively immersing ourselves in your business. This requires several days work.
Per day - We charge £1250 per day plus expenses. Existing long term clients, or clients who commit to 10 days or more, receive a 20% reduction on this charge. If travel time is required this is charged at half price i.e. £625 per day. We do not charge for classic consultants expenses such as admin or photocopying. Our only expenses are travel and hotels.
Hotels must be a minimum of 4*. That is not because we are overly precious but because we need to be fresh and need reasonable facilities to work in at the end of the day if we’re to work effectively on your project.
A day’s consulting is eight full hours.
Coffee Boys Rules
Over the years we have established certain rules which are ultimately to the benefit of the client. The classic consultant trap is to take on all jobs available and to deal with clients that they don’t like. That produces terrible results for all parties and, for the sake of our reputation (and sanity), we cannot work like that. We have absolutely no interest in taking on clients that we cannot get an outstanding result for and therefore we have established certain (arguably quite pompous) rules of operation.
- No ties. We don’t wear ties. We’re not “that” kind of consultants. We don’t spend hours producing flash reports and quoting endless management jargon. We will not tell you to “think outside the box” or engage in “blue sky thinking”. Hugh does wear very fancy shoes though.
- Rule of mutual respect. We treat each other equally. We are equals working together not employees working for you.
- Rule of “having a laugh”. It is of vital importance to us that we (and you) enjoy the experience of working with us. It never ceases to amaze us how many people simply do not enjoy their business and take it all too seriously. If you’re not prepared to have the occasional laugh then we won’t be doing any work together.
- We don’t pitch for work. If you’re putting together a short list of consultants to speak to then please remove us from that list. That is not how we work. You need to want to work with us and be familiar with what we do for any project to be successful.
- We do not shrink from difficult decisions. The key part of consulting is generally to bring about change and this may well require confrontation and some difficult decisions on your part. You need to be open minded to this.
- We do not palm you off with junior consultants fresh out of college with a shiny MBA but no experience. All consultancy is undertaken by either John Richardson or Hugh Gilmartin. We do not need to do all work together. In fact less that 20% of our work involves having to be in the same room at the same time.
- You must have read both our books and actively be aware of what we do. It wastes your time and money if you think we can come and sort out your problems if you then discover that you don’t like what we do.
- We simply won’t work with people who “cut corners” or have no passion for great food and coffee. It is completely impossible for us to do our work if you are always trying to look for cheap alternatives and ways to trick or con the customer and make short term profits. Our reputation is everything and we cannot be associated with businesses of this type.
Availability
Both Hugh Gilmartin and John Richardson are fully booked until the end of March 2011. There are, at the moment a couple of days free in April and May.